Eating The Bear Turning weakness into strength

[Music]

because i have a semi-public job

i find myself in front of crowds or

cameras fairly often

and because i’m in economic development

i get asked the question

what is it exactly that you do equally

as often

my response is i eat bears

now hopefully i haven’t already lost you

in all reality

i have the privilege of leading san

antonio’s largest organization

that’s responsible for bringing good

quality jobs to the market

and we also work to make sure that san

antonians have the skill sets and the

talent that it takes

to fill those jobs if you’ve heard about

companies like toyota navistar or hulu

having a presence here that’s because my

team at the san antonio economic

development foundation

worked hard and tirelessly to recruit

those employers

as you can imagine the job is so much

fun

it is so rewarding but we also face

our fair share of challenges when we’re

working to grow the local economy

those challenges they’re my bears

and those bears are both professional

and personal in nature

so let me back up just a step and define

bears for you

the notion of bears as challenges

actually goes back to a proverb

that my father used to repeat to me

quite a bit growing up

some days you eat the bear and some days

the bear eats you to this day

when i am working on a big project

that’s due at the end of the week

or when i’m just having a tough work

week politically

i’ll look down at my phone and see four

words via text from my father

eat the bear jay as simple

as an idea as that is for me

it fills me instantly with the strength

of childhood memories

my family my faith and sports are

everything

which makes again that proverb

incredibly profound for me

we all face our personal bears and

through the course of my career and life

i have found that when challenged there

are really only two variables within

your control

how you prepare for those challenges or

bears

and how you respond to them you simply

cannot control

how others treat you in any given

situation

and you certainly can’t prevent the

obstacles that you’ll be presented

all that you can control is yourself

so in other words i try to control the

controllables

and simply adapt to the rest that’s what

works for me

now figuring that out took some hard

work

my athletic career helped me along the

way i always worked hard in preparation

to win the games but that didn’t mean

that my team

was always successful and it certainly

didn’t mean

that i never made an error or missed a

shot i mean i know looking

at this ballerific picture of me that’s

hard to believe with that that

amount of swagger but we all make

mistakes even those bangs weren’t fail

proof

i missed some shots and i did strike out

but seriously as i grew up

i realized that everybody makes mistakes

it was all in how i responded to those

challenges

so yes of course i would get upset with

myself and challenge myself to be better

but i would also channel that

frustration to help me improve

now how did that work out so i realized

that i needed to

better understand myself in order to

control myself

in these various situations if you fast

forward

to my college and career today i

realized that

you’ve got to be very real very

vulnerable and honest with yourself

in order to be prepared to face those

challenges

and to be prepared to eat those bears

for

me that starts with understanding my

what

and my why what drives me

each and every day to want to wake up

and eat the bear

when i think about that challenge it’s

the faces of those

that i love that fill my heart and fill

my mind

my parents story is like so many other

american families

they worked hard not just to provide for

that next generation but to truly

elevate

my sister and me to that next

stratosphere one that was far greater

than their own

one that they knew we could achieve and

that was the same principle that was the

same idea that my grandparents had when

they were running their small businesses

a ranch on one side of the family and a

tire shop and a daycare on the other

now i feel personally responsible for

making sure that i am setting

that same example for the next

generation of my family

and the next generation of san antonians

alike

as mushy as it sounds this is very real

for me

every time i feel like i can’t push

through or i’m just at an impossible

stalemate

on a challenge that i’m working through

these are the faces that i think about

my sweet goddaughters addison lee and

harper grace

and of course my very own sloane

elizabeth who were expecting in

january of next year am i setting the

right example for these young women

am i showing them that i am fighting as

hard as i can

to get through this challenge to eat the

bear

you know growing up i knew that the

hustle was inevitable

and i’m lucky that i’m naturally

energetic

and driven to work hard and i’ve done so

every day of my life i’ve worked hard at

work at school

at sports at marriage although my

husband might disagree with that one

we’ve worked hard it’s just what i do

i’ve been called a machine

not necessarily a compliment i’ve been

labeled a workaholic and some people

just think i’m crazy

because i always have to be productive

but in all reality for me

it’s what i grew up with it was my

upbringing it was what was expected of

me

nobody would or could or should out

hustle the cesado

and that’s something that i live by even

to this day

now that part the hustle the hard work

that came relatively easy to me

embracing the idea that i needed to

focus on my strengths

but also accept and lean into my

weaknesses

to better understand myself and to be

able to eat my bears

that was a bit more difficult

now there have been several times in my

life that i have felt inadequate

like i didn’t have what it took to eat

the bear

and i’m sure that each and every one of

you have had those

same similar feelings i remember going

back to my collegiate athletic career

as team captain struggling one season

gosh we were off to a horribly slow

start we had a couple of losses under

our belt and

and i wasn’t playing well personally so

it was really hard for me it was tough

to figure out how can i motivate my team

when i’m struggling myself and after a

few long calls with my father

on those bus rides those grueling bus

rides back home

from those away games we talked a lot

about bears as you can imagine

and i realized during one of those bus

trips that adversity builds character

that every single challenge every single

loss every single failure

made us stronger made us stronger as

people made us stronger as

athletes and made us stronger as a team

what we needed to do was harness that

energy harness those learnings to make

us better we had to be vulnerable

with ourselves to be able to come

together and move forward

now that next season i went down with a

career ending elbow injury

and i realized at that time that that

previous year

all the bears that i had previously

eaten all the adversity

that i had dealt with was all that could

prepare me

for this next challenge one of the

biggest challenges one of the biggest

personal challenges i’ve ever faced

at that time i had to challenge myself

to understand what value proposition i

brought to the team

suffice it to say this was a tough time

in my life

you know softball was paying for my

schooling

it was apart if not the majority

of my what drove my identity you know

who was i without it

where would i go next this was a tough

time

for me but it was also the biggest

learning opportunity

i’ve ever had i was able to learn a lot

about myself personally

i focused more on my studies because i

wasn’t out having to travel with the

team

and of course i embraced the grueling

physical activity sometimes four days

and even more

trying to work to get myself physically

healthy again to potentially

return to the game that i loved now that

was tough

because i was trying to figure out at

that time how do i motivate my team from

the bench

motivate my team from back home when

they were off traveling for games

while i was attempting to motivate

myself to get back

to normal it was tough truly a tough

time

but i pushed myself and realized at that

moment in time

that the value that i brought to my team

wasn’t necessarily in my physical state

it was in the mental resiliency that i

brought

i have never been even when i was at my

healthiest state i have never been

on the softball field the biggest the

strongest or the fastest

but i was always the team captain i was

always the change agent

and the leader again i had to embrace my

weaknesses at that time even a physical

weakness

to be able to realize what i brought to

the table to be able to realize how i

could motivate my team to move forward

in a variety of different capacities

even on the bench even on the sidelines

because after all you don’t have to

prove yourself

if you are working continuously to

improve yourself

and when you’re around tables like i am

with some of the nation’s top ceos and

our local

top ceos it is so easy for those

thoughts to creep back

into your mind that you have to prove

that you have what it takes to belong at

that table

each and every time those thoughts start

creeping back up i have to remind myself

to pause

and reflect because one it is a great

honor to have a seat at that table and i

am representing

far more than just myself there

but i have to take those opportunities

to really learn

from these folks at the table to learn

what good looks like

to make me better as a person to make me

better as a ceo

and as a leader great opportunities

to see the way that our top leaders

operate but it’s also a great

opportunity to sometimes see what bad

looks like

and to pick up on some of those negative

things that i might not want to

incorporate into my leadership style

my professional growth and career

trajectory

has been anything but linear i rose up

through the ranks

at cps energy our nation’s largest

meanest municipally owned electric and

gas company

i have always been driven to learn and

not necessarily earn

so there at cps i took on all the gritty

around-the-clock work that nobody wanted

i ate the bear

i ate a lot of bears i was hungry still

lamb

but it all paid off i became the

youngest vice president

in the history of that company my next

gig

was the job that i’m in today and let me

tell you

when i was first contacted by the

chairman of the economic development

foundation

mentioning that i should consider to

apply i thought there is no way

there is no way one i was on a great

trajectory at cps energy i had a lot of

good things in front of me

and after all what did i even know about

economic development

besides infrastructure and rates i mean

that bear

that bear would surely eat me wouldn’t

it i mean all the odds were against me

so talk about non-linear now

oddly enough it seemed that what served

me well at cps energy

and all those different bears i had a

chance to eat had actually prepared me

for the job at edf because i had to work

to rebuild that organization work to

reposition that organization

it’s been four years since i took on

that assignment

that big bad bear and i’ll tell you

that it hasn’t been easy but i am so

proud of how far

our team has come the progress that our

community has made

and where we’re at today you know as a

community

we understand our strengths and our

weaknesses just like i had to do

personally as a community we are diverse

and

we are growing leaps and bounds by way

of population that’s a great strength of

ours

but we also have some weaknesses we lack

educational attainment

income inequality is another big

challenge for us in poverty

but we’re looking at ourselves in the

mirror and we see those challenges and

we’re working daily to improve

to eat the bears both large and small

and to make progress

day in and day out personally

my biggest bear lives inside my head in

the form of an inferiority complex all

of those

inadequate feelings i was previously

mentioning to you all

but bears can come in all shapes and

sizes

they can be fierce competitors they can

be political

or personal challenges and then of

course there’s the most recent bear

probably the biggest bear that each of

us have faced yet

in covid 19 uncertainty what are your

bears

are they bigger now that kovit has come

into our lives

none of us could have foreseen this

challenge that we find ourselves in now

it is one of the biggest bears but i am

hopeful

that this pandemic brings on the best

kind of awakening kind of like a

like a new year’s resolution but much

more meaningful

in our lives you know this could be the

time of invention

innovation transformation i hope that

you apply for a job that you think you

might not get

maybe start running or taking on yoga

something to that effect

take on classes that are far outside of

your comfort zone create your own

response to this pandemic

we are all in it together no doubt even

when our bodies

are tired our hearts and minds can

overcome

so i say let’s grab a fork and let’s eat

this bear

now how do we do that we’ve got to be

prepared

right by allowing ourselves to

understand our what and our why

to give you that hustle to give you that

drive and we also have to be nimble

in our responses by understanding that

you can only control the controllables

and you can only control yourself

remember

that some days you eat the bear and some

days

the bear eats you we grow stronger in

winning

we grow stronger and losing and we grow

stronger in learning

thank you

you